


Pin the sun upon the shifting sand

by tea_for_lupin



Series: Pin the sun 'verse [2]
Category: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Light Angst, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2018-11-07 04:51:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11051688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tea_for_lupin/pseuds/tea_for_lupin
Summary: Will, Bran and Jane, together, as they should be.WIP; the first 3 or four chapters are finished but I'm not 100% sure where things will end up, nor how long it will take me to get them there. But I thought it might be worthwhile to start posting it, nonetheless.





	1. Cantr'er Gwaelod

‘Oh,’ said Will. And then again, ‘ _Oh_.’

‘Yes,’ said Bran. ‘It’s something, isn’t it?’

Will nodded, mutely; his chest was tight with an emotion he did not care to identify. 

Bran shot him a glance. ‘Tide’s fully out, now, you know—we can walk down, have a poke around. If you want.’ His words were half a question, and his brow was furrowed.

Will pulled himself together, cleared his throat. ‘Yeah, I’d love to. There’s still a couple of hours before dark, isn’t there?’

The dry dunes whispered under their feet and the wind blew away all trace of their footprints as if they were followed by hungry ghosts.

‘Can’t imagine why there’s not more people here,’ Bran joked, speaking loudly to be heard over the sounds of the wind and the grey waves. He pulled his woollen hat down further over his ears; his lips were chapped. ‘Perfect tourist weather, this.’ 

Will grinned; his own gloved hands were jammed firmly in the pockets of his down jacket. ‘I’m the perfect tourist, then.’ He walked on a few more steps before realising that Bran was no longer beside him, and wheeled round to find him standing, still and straight, on a low rounded rock. Bran’s face looked very white beneath the dark hat and dark glasses that he wore even on this sunless afternoon, and his head was cocked to one side, as if considering something.

‘Bran?’ Will walked back and stood with his head thrown back to meet Bran’s gaze. ‘What is it?’

‘You have never been a tourist in my country, Will,’ Bran said, and his voice seemed remote yet clear. A sudden shiver went down Will’s back, and it had nothing to do with the cold. ‘You… _belong_ here, in some way that I don’t understand.’ 

A thousand things that he could possibly say—and at the same time could never possibly say—flooded Will’s thoughts, and he blinked. The wind stung his eyes. ‘I suppose I do,’ he said at last, and stamped his feet. ‘Let’s keep going, I’m freezing to death just standing here.’

Bran shook his head as if to clear it, and stepped down from the rock, and they walked on.

They were fully amongst the remains now; petrified stumps emerged darkly from the dregs of wet sand, and a little ahead there was what looked like a walkway, jutting out forlornly towards the withdrawn sea.

‘Hey, look at this,’ Bran said suddenly, squatting down and pointing at a shallow impression, caught forever in time by the action of peat and petrification. ‘Looks like a footprint.’

Will followed suit and looked closely. ‘I think you’re right. And see, here—is that a paw print?’

Bran rocked back on his heels, looking out to sea. ‘I wonder what it was like, back then? With the forest and the buildings and all that?’

‘Oh, beautiful,’ Will said lightly, but his heart ached. ‘Buildings of white and gold, and seven different kinds of trees growing right down to the river bank, and a glass tower shining in the distance…’

Bran gave him an incredulous look. ‘What, in the Palaeolithic?’

‘Oh! Well, if you’re going to be so _literal_ —’ Will rolled his eyes. ‘Where’s your poetic spirit, you sorry excuse for a Welshman?’

‘I’m saving it for the Eisteddfod tomorrow.’ Bran straightened up and stretched. ‘Hang on, what’s that?’

A beam of sunlight had been flung out from beneath the low clouds; it turned a patch of the wet sand to white brilliance, and the suddenness of it struck their eyes like a pillar of cold flame. Will squinted. ‘Just the sun, I think.’

But Bran started forward, hand outstretched. ‘Ah, _duw_ , he is mad, what is he doing?’

‘Who? I can’t see anyone—’ Will hastened after, blinking away the afterimages as quickly as he could. Then Bran stopped almost as suddenly as he had started, and Will could not prevent the collision. They went down in a tangle of knees and elbows, narrowly missing an outcrop of stone.

‘Ow.’ Will rubbed his arm ruefully, and pushed himself to his feet, offering a hand up to Bran. ‘Sorry about that. You all right? Lord, we’re too old for this. What on earth were you chasing after?’

Bran opened his mouth, shut it again, and said in a voice that strove for normality, ‘Ah, nothing. Trick of the light, like you said, wasn’t it. Didn’t mean to be an idiot about it. Forget it, eh?’

Will raised his eyebrows. ‘Come off it, Bran. Tell me what you thought you saw? After all, I’m not going to tell you you’re crazy—we spent the night on Cader together all those years ago, didn’t we—’

‘—and I’m the one who came down a poet, so you’re the mad one, yes, yes.’ Bran finished their shared litany in good humour, but his smile was strained. He squared his shoulders. ‘All right, then. I thought I saw someone running along that walkway. All the way along, mind—and straight on past the end as if he was not treading the thin air.’

Will looked sharply out to the walkway and then back to Bran. ‘What happened to him?’

‘He vanished. As if—’ Bran gestured as he sought for the right words ‘—as if he had gone through a, a door.’ He laughed uneasily. ‘Imagining things, me. It couldn’t have been real. Could it?’

The question came out more pleading than Will had expected, and Bran’s face was drawn. Will hesitated a moment, then asked, ‘What did he look like, this man you saw?’

Bran’s exhalation of breath was a little shaky, but he flashed Will a quick, grateful smile. ‘Tall, he was. Very tall, with white hair. And a blue cloak. I never see much else.’

And now Will’s heart was in his throat, and he could feel the hammering of the pulse beneath his skin. ‘Then you’ve… you’ve seen him before?’

Bran shrugged, helplessly. ‘I think I have, a few times. Now you’re the only one I’ll ever admit this to, mind—’

‘Well, of course.’

‘—but he reminds me of someone. I can’t think who. Someone I met a long time ago, it seems, only I have racked and racked my brains, all the way back to when you came visiting for the first time. Because he reminds me of, of you too.’ Bran removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes, settled the glasses back in place. ‘But I am thinking it must only ever have been a dream. Perhaps one I had about the same time as I met you, and that would account for the connection, wouldn’t it?’

‘Mmm,’ Will said noncommittally, and then seeing the expression on Bran’s face, managed to add, ‘that, that does make sense, I suppose.’ But he felt that the words left his lips strangely, for with a crash as of a dam breaking his Old One’s senses came alive as they had not been for years. For long moments he struggled with the now-unfamiliar need to stand in two worlds at once; his head was spinning and his vision was doubled, and in his mind Will called out, desperately, _Merriman, Merriman!_

Bran’s look had changed to one of concern, and he put a hand under Will’s elbow to steady him. ‘Here, now, Will, what’s the matter, are you ill? Is it a migraine?’

‘No, no— just give me a minute, I’ll be all right.’ Will took in a deep breath and exhaled to a slow count; he blinked, and blinked again, and things slotted back into their rightful places. But now he stood between a grey sea and a white shore, looking out on a world washed with a new vibrancy, and he could not stop the smile that was breaking upon his face. 

‘I thought you were going to faint,’ Bran said, examining him suspiciously. ‘And now you look like someone just gave you a puppy for Christmas. Are you sure you’re all right, then?’

‘Yeah,’ Will said, grinning like an idiot. ‘More than.’


	2. Through the Doors

That night Will dreamed (or thought he dreamed, but it was not a dream), of Merriman and the Lady, and he walked through the Doors out of Time to the same haunting melody, familiar as if he had never stopped hearing it.

The fire leapt beneath the great chimney and the tapestries flickered in its shifting light. 

‘Well met, Will Stanton,’ said Merriman, and his deep, dark eyes were warm with greeting.

Will bowed, because words were too much for this moment, and he took the Lady’s hand and bent over it. 

The Lady smiled. ‘Welcome, Will,’ she said.

Merriman said, ‘How goes the day, my Watchman?’

Will wrinkled his nose and took a deep breath. ‘A bit strangely,’ he said, with only the slightest tremor in his voice. Thirty-five, nearly forty years of loss, and here he stood, out of Time, in the place where Time could not touch, though it had laid its marks on him harshly enough over the years. But Merriman… Merriman and the Lady looked no different than the day Will had said farewell to them upon a hilltop. Will felt all at once both very old, and very young, and very empty. He shook himself.

‘Strangely indeed,’ said the Lady.

A dozen questions, and then a dozen more, flicked through Will’s mind, but he contented himself with the simplest. ‘Why am I here, after—’ He swallowed. ‘After so long?’

‘You know why, Watchman,’ Merriman said. ‘You walked there only hours ago.’

‘The Lost Land.’ Merriman bowed his head as Will went on, ‘It’s coming back, resurfacing. And you—you were there, Bran saw you.’

‘Bran sees echoes, Will,’ the Lady put in, ‘echoes only. The waters that drowned the Land recede and the Land gives up its ghosts to those who can see them.’

‘Does that matter?’ Will asked; the words came out more sharply than he had intended, and he bit his lip. ‘I mean… echoes, and ghosts. Say that Bran can see them, or Jane can—I don’t know that she can, she hasn’t said. But what’s the harm? They don’t… they don’t _remember_.’ His voice cracked on the last word, and he balled his hands into fists, let the nails dig into his palms. Tears blurred his vision. This was not how he had imagined this reunion, not how he had dreamed it. The humming thrill he had felt earlier that day on the beach was unexpectedly washed away in a tide of grief and anger. 

Merriman’s carven face softened, and he said with some gentleness in his deep voice, ‘The years have been hard on you, Will.’

‘Yes,’ Will said curtly, ‘yes, they have.’

‘You could have chosen to make them easier, but you did not.’

The fire leapt and logs spat in the silence before Will answered. ‘You named me Watchman. Who else should I have watched over?’ He smiled a little wryly. ‘Gwion also watched, in Caer Wydyr, even when it pained him more than he could bear.’ 

‘So he did.’ Merriman looked to the Lady, and something unspoken seemed to pass between them. ‘In answer to your question Will—does it matter, that Bran is seeing echoes of the past, that Jane may too? No. No, it does not matter. Human minds have ways of protecting themselves against the things that it would be too much for them to know. As the Land returns again to the waves, the ghosts it brings with it will also fade back to the world of half-remembered dreams, if they are remembered at all.’

Will glanced across at the Lady, who nodded. The rose-coloured ring on her finger caught the flames as she held out her hand to him. ‘We did not know that the Lost Land would be uncovered in this fashion,’ she said, taking Will’s hands in her own, ‘but the world turns in strange ways at times, and unlooked-for opportunities appear. This is your opportunity, Will, while the Land’s echoes last. The only one, perhaps. But if you wish it, you may walk out of Time with us, through the Doors, and be at last amongst the Circle of Old Ones who have gone before you.’

‘We would welcome you, Will,’ Merriman said. His expression was impassive but there was a wealth of feeling, more than Will had ever thought to hear, in his words. ‘You have been missed.’

‘I—’ Will shook his head, at a loss for what to say. His heart seemed to have dropped to the pit of his stomach, for his chest felt shockingly hollow. Wasn’t this what he had hoped for—secretly, achingly, shamefully hoped for, even on the most joyous days of his mundane life? The pain of that hope, and the guilt of it, was like a fragment of shrapnel that could not be removed from an otherwise-healed wound. But now, when the chance was within his grasp… 

‘I need time,’ he said. ‘May I have time?’

‘A day and a night and a day you shall have,’ said the Lady, ‘but no more; until the storm blows in from the sea, and the waves take the Lost Land back to themselves.’

Will bowed. ’Thank you, madam.’ Then, lifting his eyes to hers, he asked, half-dreading the answer, ‘Do you know—what choice I will make?’

‘Yes, Will,’ she said gently, ‘I believe I do.’


	3. Eisteddfod; Eirias

The audience was hushed, expectant, and Bran took the stage. He was dressed in black, an open-necked shirt, soft slacks; and the spotlights glinted from the dark lenses of his glasses. Will’s heart leapt with pride, as it always did, to see him up there, and he exchanged a grin with Jane, who sat beside him. She squeezed his hand, heartfelt-tight; her eyes were shining as she turned back to the stage. And the music began, quietly, Bran’s hands gently playing over the strings of his harp in a minor key, soft and melancholy. 

Then he began to sing, and as the liquid Welsh spilled from his lips Will froze in his seat, every hair standing on end.

> The sun is a sword, a blazing sword  
>  and it cuts the world in two;  
>  the sun is a sword, a blazing sword  
>  and it sunders me from you. 

Bran’s baritone was warm yet filled with an aching sadness, and the words drew up deep memories in Will’s mind, of Bran standing on a white beach under a midsummer sunrise, a crystal sword flaming in his grasp. Beside him, Jane drew in a sudden soft breath.

> I would take that sword, and wield it,  
>  I would take it in my hand,  
>  and pin the sun to rove no more  
>  upon the shifting sand.
> 
> The crystal sword refracts the light  
>  from the sun now stood so still  
>  and it blossoms like a midsummer tree  
>  alone upon a hill. 
> 
> The flowers fall, the world is cold  
>  so soon do we forget  
>  and let the sun resume once more  
>  the path on which it’s set…

As the last of the trembling notes faded away the concert hall erupted with applause, but Will could not join in it.

‘Will? What’s the matter, Will?’ Jane was nudging him, concern on her face; but Bran was taking his second bow, and leaving the spotlit stage, and the next musician was entering.

‘Later,’ Will whispered back with an effort, as the applause died down around them, ‘sorry, I’ll explain later—I’m sorry, I just—’ He shrugged, awkwardly, and Jane nodded, quirking her lips in a half-smile that did not make it to her puzzled eyes.


	4. Stay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A very belated, but fairly long, chapter (which I hope makes up for the belatedness). This work is definitely not abandoned! Just slow.

When Will woke the next morning he found Bran already up, though Jane still slept deeply. Will scrubbed his hands over his face and rolled off the bed, stretching and groaning quietly as he made his way out to the living room, pausing to grab a pullover from the neat pile of clothes that lay atop his suitcase. Bran was standing silhouetted against the french windows, cradling a mug between his hands. 

‘Good morning,’ Will said. He slid his arms around Bran’s waist from behind, pressing a kiss to Bran’s shoulder as he did so. 

Bran leaned back briefly into the embrace. ‘Cup of tea, eh?’

‘Yes please,’ Will said, and Bran turned in his arms to kiss Will gently on the forehead before pulling away and heading to the kitchen. Will followed, and Bran handed him a mug, and they both sat down at the kitchen table. 

‘How was the after party, then?’ 

Bran snorted. ‘Eh, it was all right.’

‘That good?’ 

Bran grinned, and they drank their tea. Yet the silence between them was strained in some way, Will thought, and in his head ran the melody that Bran had played and the words he had sung the night before.

‘Did you like it?’ 

The question came so suddenly that it took Will by surprise, and he blinked at Bran for a moment. ‘Sorry?’

‘Did you like it?’ Bran repeated, and he passed his tongue over his lips as if he was nervous. ‘ _Eirias_. The piece I performed last night.’ 

‘Yes,’ Will said, immediately and with intensity, ‘yes, I did. It was, it was,’ he gestured with one hand, ‘the best thing of yours I’ve ever heard. It was—’ he paused, and then went on, half to himself, ‘—so sad.’

‘I wrote it for you.’

Will’s heart thudded painfully in his chest, so hard he felt sure Bran could hear it. ‘For me?’

‘I miss you,’ Bran said, softly; he flicked his golden eyes up to meet Will’s grey ones and then looked back down at the kitchen table. His knuckles stood out stark as he gripped his mug. ’When you're not here. I wish you’d stay.’ He glanced up again. ‘We wish you'd stay.’

‘Oh.’ It came out wrong; Will could see that, as soon as the word left his mouth. Bran said nothing, but his shoulders tightened, and he took another gulp of tea without looking at Will.

‘Bran, I—’ Will broke off as Jane came out to the kitchen, yawning, running her hands through her short grey hair. 

She dropped a kiss to Bran’s head. ‘Morning, _cariadon_ ,’ she said, and did the same to Will. She smelt warmly of sleep, still. ‘Any tea left?’

‘I’ll make another pot,’ Bran said. He stood, not glancing at Will, and went to fill the kettle.

Jane took Bran’s seat, pulling her knees up under her chin and looking from Will to Bran and back again, head tilted to one side. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘ _Nothing_ ,’ Bran said, and Will said, ‘Bran, don’t do this,’ and Jane said, ‘It doesn’t look like nothing, to me.’ She switched to a cross-legged position and reached out to lace her fingers into Will’s. ‘Tell me.’

Will squeezed her hand gently, and she squeezed back. ‘I don’t know where to start,’ he admitted; and it was so true he almost laughed. 

Water rattled in the kettle, and Bran said, turning round to face them, ‘Let us lay it out, then.’ He swallowed, and crossed his arms over his chest, and his words came out all in a rush. ‘For years you have… you’ve danced in and out of our lives like one of the _tylwyth teg_ , sent to—’ his fine pale lips turned up in the saddest smile Will had ever seen ‘—to seduce the hapless mortals and then disappear like the mist when the sun comes up.’

Will did laugh then, but it was a laugh edged with tears. ‘If I remember rightly, I wasn't the one doing the seducing, that first time.’ 

Jane wrinkled her nose at him cheerfully. ‘If I remember rightly, very pleasant it was too, and not just the first time, either.’

The kettle clicked off. Bran busied himself with the teapot and a canister of tea. ‘It is not the first time that I am talking of,’ he said, ‘nor the second time, neither, nor the tenth. I am talking about now.’

‘Now?’ Will asked. His voice shook, a little.

‘Yes, now,’ Bran said. He brought the teapot back over to the table and set it there, then leaned against the bench with his hands shoved into his pockets, head thrown back to give him every inch of his considerable height. It was a pose of easy arrogance, as natural to Bran as breathing, but Will could read beneath it, and he saw defensiveness, uncertainty. 

Before Bran could speak again, Jane said, pouring herself some tea, ’The long and short of it is, Will: none of us are getting any younger. Every time you’ve left, over the years, we’ve missed you, so much, but it wasn’t practical for us to suggest anything different. But now?—now the children have moved out. There’s room for you here, your own room as well as our bed, if you’d like it. We certainly would, both of us, more than anything. What do you think?’ 

Part of Will cried out, _Yes, yes_ , at war with the vigilant side of him that said: _you are not whole, you are not real, you are not human, you may not have this._

_You could not bear it._

Out loud, he said, ‘Oh, Jane. I don’t… I don't know.’

‘That’s all right,’ she said, a wry smile turning up one corner of her mouth; there was colour high in her cheeks, and her eyes gleamed suspiciously. ‘It’s a big thing, of course. We just… wanted to ask. To let you know the option was there.’ She added, gently, ‘You’ve always been part of our family, Will. You always will be, whatever you decide.’

Will raised his mug, but his hands shook, and he set it down again; the tea was getting cold, anyway, by now. He stared down into it, but found no help. He was adrift on an unfamiliar sea, and the waves were rising around him, and he could no longer see the shore.

He looked up at Bran. ‘I didn’t know you felt like that,’ he said, and it was only half a lie. ‘I didn’t know that either of you wanted… more than what we had already.’ 

(Which was: short visits, maybe once a year. Longer visits, every second Christmas or so. Letters, phone calls, sending presents for Bran and Jane’s three children; emails, over the more recent years. Kisses and touches and precious nights spent together, the three of them wrapped up in each other: Jane and Bran so solid and substantial that between them Will could feel real, too.

And then, inevitable: goodbye after goodbye after goodbye. 

One goes alone.)

‘How could you not know?’ Bran burst out, and Jane said, ‘Bran! It’s not as if Will can read minds—’ and Bran said, with an unhappy shrug, ‘All right, Jenny, all right.’ He offered his hands to Will, who took them, and was pulled out of his chair and into a fierce tight hug.

‘I’d like to stay,’ Will said, into Bran’s shoulder. ‘I’d _love_ it. But—’ 

‘Then do it,’ Bran said, fierce and soft. ‘Did you not say, all those years ago, that you would do whatever I asked of you, _fy dewin_?’

Will gave a small involuntary shiver as he remembered what the first thing Bran had asked him to do had been. He answered with the beginnings of a grin, ‘Well, yes—and then I had to freeze my arse off on Cader Idris, and eat your first attempt at making spaghetti—it’s a wonder I’m still alive, after that occasion—’

‘You were certainly braver than I was,’ Jane said with a shudder.

Bran made a scoffing sound, but there was mirth in his voice. ‘ _Twt_ , man, you are all the tougher for it.’ He shook his finger at Jane. ‘And you, you philistine, you missed out on one of the culinary masterpieces of our time.’

‘Oh, half-cooked pasta with tomato paste was too advanced for my undeveloped palate, was it?’ 

‘Exactly so.’

Will felt a great laugh building inside him. ‘I suppose, then, that so long as Bran doesn’t do any cooking he expects us to eat, I should consider that this is the softest option I’m ever getting?’

But then his breath was momentarily taken away, because Bran shifted his hands down to Will’s hips and pressed Will against him, hard. ‘Not a _completely_ soft option,’ he said, in a wicked whisper that sent a sharp spike of desire right through Will’s body, fierce and deep. In the wake of the want, the wash of panic: habitual, heart-hammering, familiar. Will buried his head against Bran’s shoulder and breathed in the scent of him, and stretched out a hand behind himself to Jane. She took it and drew herself into Will’s side, around him and Bran, and her cheek was wet where it pressed against Will’s.

**Author's Note:**

> [Part of (what is thought to be) Cantr'er Gwaelod uncovered after storms in 2014](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/feb/20/prehistoric-forest-borth-cardigan-bay-wales)


End file.
